More unachievable? Not at all. While I feel for SpaceX, that has to be a great disappointment, staging failures are nothing new. In fact, staging may well be the toughest thing to do at first since you can't really test it well on the ground. How to stage easily and consistently is something I've been pondering from the start, as I'm sure SpaceX has.

First, the aim of the N-Prize isn't to do serious anything. This stuff is way too important to take seriously.

But, what *can't* you do in 20 grams? 10 grams (or less) will buy you a transmitter and enough solar panel to talk to the guys on the ground. That leaves you 10 grams. Kylie Minogue weighs slightly less than that, and can do many things. More specifically, most of what you want to do up there concerns sensing of one sort or another, and there aren't that many situations where mass is a limiting factor in sensing. Sure, you can't make a 20ft mirror or lens for ten grams (or can you?), but there's a lot you can do.

Also, consider this. Suppose that someone came to you today and said "we can fly a bunch of satellites for a thousand quid a throw, maximum mass 20 grams each", don't you think that would open up some new possibilities? Give me a thousand 20-gram satellites up there, and I'll do a lot more than you can do with a million quid's worth of conventional launch capability.

Have fun, people.

_________________"Gentlemen, we haven't got any money, so we are going to have to think!"

Other than a stunt-like demonstration, I don't think tiny satellites have anything to offer but small additions to low orbit collision hazard. Also satellites this small would have to be in fairly high orbits to have a lifetime over a few days.

Better to use the developed capability to send tiny 100 to 200 gram spacecraft into the space between the orbits of Earth and Mars.

These could easily be tracked by amateur astronomers as slowly moving objects in the night sky, using diode lasers as the data transmission means, as outlined in the Microlaunchers site.

The value of the N Prize is as an evolutionary step toward actual exploration, such as photographing near Earth asteroids.

Rob
Hey once the N-Prize is won whatâ€™s to say we donâ€™t launch cubesats commercially? I mean thatâ€™s the plan isnâ€™t it? The little one to win the prize and then get busy launching small satellites. I cant see expending all that dough with no return?

Will be interesting to see if Paul extends the prize if it doesnt get won! even if the prize money drops every 6 months after or something!

Should be possible to win though! and perhaps any whisper of an extended date may just make people work slower thus actually being negative on the prize!

Be good if people could bring concepts and hardware to the next Nprize meeting, be a little like the Xprize Cup perhaps!

Hmmm, i wonder if there is a paper anywhere looking into the viability of Cubesats being commercially viable as a business! i guess evolving technology means they can carry more and more thus becoming more useful.

just for reference- CubeSat actually refers to a specific document maintained by CalPoly that states requirements for a satellite to actually be considered a "CubeSat". most of those requirements are designed to make it deploy from their deployer thingy, and protect the primary payload. when you say cubesat you mean picosat, but as to cubesats: a) the deployer is too big for an N-Prize class vehicle (~5kg fully loaded (3 cubesats)), and b) alot of their development requirements are unnecessary for a payload that IS the primary. so while capabilities to launch cubesats might be nice, it would make more sense for all you guys (the teams) to get together, and decide on a fairly uniform fairing shape (if not size, since i imagine there will be different diameter rockets). then people developing for N-Prize vehicles would know to make their satellite x shape, with y dimensions and z mass requirements, while avoiding requirements due to being a secondary payload.

Couldn't the rockets be simply made larger to carry a heavier payload? While I couldn't do much except transmit a tracking signal with 20g, give me 100g and I could map the Earth. Well, anything below the orbit. Cameras don't weigh that much.

If I was allowed to launch 1kg into orbit... I could possibly design a small microgravity experiment, using a tether and the expended booster.